Preview — The Story of My Teeth
by Valeria Luiselli

The Story of My Teeth

I was born in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City, with four premature teeth and my body completely covered in a very fine coat of fuzz. But I'm grateful for that inauspicious start because ugliness, as my other uncle, Eurípides López Sánchez, was given to saying, is character forming.

Highway is a late-in-life world traveler, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneerI was born in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City, with four premature teeth and my body completely covered in a very fine coat of fuzz. But I'm grateful for that inauspicious start because ugliness, as my other uncle, Eurípides López Sánchez, was given to saying, is character forming.

Highway is a late-in-life world traveler, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious possessions are the teeth of the "notorious infamous" like Plato, Petrarch, and Virginia Woolf. Written in collaboration with the workers at a Jumex juice factory, Teeth is an elegant, witty, exhilarating romp through the industrial suburbs of Mexico City and Luiselli's own literary influences....more

My luck was without equal, my life was a poem, and I was certain that one day, someone was going to write the beautiful tale of my dental autobiography.

Literature has a unique role in the discussions of truth and ideas. When we tell a story we dress the themes and messages up in an elegant wardrobe of fiction and send them out to seduce the audience. Fiction and lying may seem like blood-relations, yet the major function of a lie is to deceive while fiction’s function is to illuminate. The storiMy luck was without equal, my life was a poem, and I was certain that one day, someone was going to write the beautiful tale of my dental autobiography.

Literature has a unique role in the discussions of truth and ideas. When we tell a story we dress the themes and messages up in an elegant wardrobe of fiction and send them out to seduce the audience. Fiction and lying may seem like blood-relations, yet the major function of a lie is to deceive while fiction’s function is to illuminate. The stories may have some bearing in a true event or may be completely fabricated, yet through the art of storytelling we deliver ideas that are far more digestible through their entertainment and fancy than cut-and-dry explication. Gustavo ‘Highway’ Sanchez Sanchez, collector, auctioneer extraordinaire and focal character of The Story of My Teeth, the second novel by the enchanting Valeria Luiselli (Faces in the Crowd), has developed a method of storytelling to elevate the intrigue of his auction lots that involves ‘an elegant surpassing of the truth’ in an effort to capture the essence of an object. Highway becomes a conduit for Luiselli to examine the metaphysics of words and the proximity between the signifier and the signified through a kaleidoscopic collection of stories and storytelling. Created through a collaboration with Luiselli and the workers at the Jumex Juice factory in Mexico—a factory that also houses and funds a contemporary art gallery—, Luiselli crafts what she terms a ‘novel-essay’ that uses fiction in order to understand fiction in a more academic sense without skimping on the fun. The Story of My Teeth is an ambitious and fascinating unique multi-platform collaborative art piece that succeeds on all its many levels of exploration to discuss the illuminating power of storytelling to enhance the power of the objects being examined.

The factory produced juices. And the juices, in turn, produced art... I was in a sense the gatekeeper of a collection of objects of real beauty and truth.

The Story of My Teeth began when Luiselli was commissioned to write a piece for the Galaria Jumex on ‘the bridges—or lack thereof—between the featured artwork, the gallery, and the larger context of which the gallery formed part.’ Luiselli wrote Teeth in installments which were then read aloud to the factory workers in the style of former ‘tobacco readers’, an idea that began in a cigar factory to read aloud to workers to reduce the fatigue of the mundane job. Luiselli was then sent recordings of the book group discussions formed by the workers and the story was continually shaped by the reactions and life stories of the workers to form a unique and curious collaborative effect between artist and audience. Highway’s in-novel story takes on a similar creative collaboration as his ‘dental autobiography’ is dictated to his ghost-writer Jacobo de Voragine (who makes several appearances and has his own first-person account in a later chapter). Highway concluding paragraphs by stating ‘End of memory,’ or 'End of declaration,’ or something to a similar effect is realized to be the seam between him and his ghost-writer, concluding as such to signal to Voragine to stop writing. It is, admittedly, a bit twee, but it works. There is also a unique collaboration between author and translator, with translator Christina MacSweeney adding a timeline of her own creation that connects Highway’s life with a history of literary events that are present on varying levels in the novel. Luiselli says the translated work is a ‘version’ of the text and views the concept of an invisible translator as an obsolete idea in a work about collaboration and the functions of storytelling.

Places and things are made up of stories.

The Jumex factory, the workers and the art on display in the gallery (there is even a section of photographs of the actual places mentioned in the novel to add another layer to the unique and exciting organization of this multi-media work of art) all play a large role in Teeth, though many of the names and details were changed. This lead Luiselli to further questions on art and author.

How does distancing an object or name from its context...affect its meaning and interpretation? How do discourse, narrative, and authorial signatures or names modify the way we perceive artwork and literary text?

Teeth becomes the very impressive and erudite journey towards attempting to answer that question. There is an interesting exchange between Highway and Voragine when Highway begins dictating short stories to accompany each piece of the artwork they steal from the gallery:

But if we use the real artists names, Voragine said, we’ll get caught.Yes, good thinking young man. We will have to modify them.But if we modify them, he went on, the objects will lose their value.No they won’t.Yes they will.Voragine, please shut up and write this down.¹

Highway creates short stories that are irrelevant to the actual artists intention for their work, but the cumulative effect produces something uniquely beautiful on it’s own. This technique often occurs in literature, writing poetry from the experience of seeing a painting or adopting photographs and altering their truth to fit and illuminate the fiction of a work (recently Mario Bellatin, who is briefly mentioned in the novel, did this in his Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose For Fiction).

The regular connection between a sign, its sense, and its reference is of such a kind that to the sign there corresponds a definite sense and to that in turn a definite reference, while to a given reference (an object) there does not belong only a single sign - Gottlob Frege

The altering of names of artists is also examined through Highway’s actions. Highway frequently quotes from actual authors and philosophers, except these quotes are attributed to family relatives such as ‘my cousin Juan Pablo Sanchez Sarte,’ ‘my uncle Miguel Sanchez Foucault,’ or a hilarious passage about morning erections attributed to ‘my uncle Marcelo Sanchez-Proust’. Luiselli distances the proximity between name and actual object, yet does not alter the message at hand. These actual people become (to quote Foucault) ‘singular lives transformed into strange poems through who knows what twist of fate.’ They have become stories themselves, a way of surpassing the truth to make it more fluid and adaptable to the story at hand without sacrificing the content, only elevating its usage. Along with the adapted quotes, each chapter begins with a quote about the relationship between names and objects from great minds such as Bertrand Russell or John Stuart Mill (their actual names accompanying the quotes).

There is in all men a natural propensity to magnify or extenuate what comes before them, and no one is contented with the exact truth.

Highway has mastered the ‘Hyperbolic Effect’ of an auctioneer. Highway auctions off a collection of teeth—his own teeth—to a church parish to raise money for the church. When announcing his lot, he tells stories about the fictional owner of each tooth, from Virginia Woolf, C.K. Chesterton to Enrique Vila-Matas², drawing a connection between tooth and famous person through a tale relating to their teeth.

I could restore an object’s value through “an elegant surpassing of the truth.” This meant that the stories I would tell about the lots would all be based on facts that were, occasionally, exaggerated or, to put it another way, better illuminated.

Is this not essentially the purpose and effect of fiction? It may not be the Truth, but it is perhaps as equally valid and more adaptable. Parables are a common theme of the novel, which are a great way of expressing a moral or a message by elucidating it through story. Parables were the great tool of Jesus in the Bible. The parables he told were not real events, but stories that were more meaningful than a simple lie, stories that delivered a message we can all understand and shape. It is, perhaps, another element of collaboration in which the creativity of the teller and the intellect of the receiver must connect to discern the truth behind the fiction.

The Story of My Teeth is a brilliant and effective piece of artwork that surpasses the normal definition of a novel. A multi-layered, multi-media, collaborative product, this novel-essay elevates a discussion of art theory into a parable we can all walk around with in our hands, heads and hearts. Wildly comic, surprising and eloquent, Teeth is a story about stories made up of stories that never feels like a gimmick or a cheap literary trick. Which is an astounding accomplishment, especially for such a young and new writer on the scene. I eagerly await her next novel, Valeria Luiselli is a brilliant author and has a promising career that I can’t wait to continue following.

4/5

I wasn’t just a lowly seller of objects, but, first and foremost, a lover and collector of good stories, which is the only honest way of modifying the value of an object.

¹ Note that there are no quotation marks around the dialogue in the novel. This further reflects the collaborative effect of Highway’s autobiography being dictated as, in effect, the entirety of the novel would be encased by a single set of quotations.

² Luiselli is a powerful and important new voice in the Latin American literary tradition and pays homage to her predecessors and contemporaries. Authors like Alejandro Zambra, César Aira (Emir, take note) or Jorge Luis Borges, are briefly mentioned to pay tribute to their influences and many of their styles make brief cameos as well as their names. Luiselli shows respect for those who have taken the Latin American literary culture to where it is today, takes their efforts to heart, and advances upon them to help propel literature towards further bright horizons. She is a true gem....more

Suppose, if you can, or if you will, that after a night of revelry and telling each other stories (lies), César Aira and Enrique Vila-Matas somehow managed to conceive a child—a love child, if you will—a child who grew up as an amazingly gifted and surprising author whose stories about stories (a gift from EV-M’s Y chromosome) might take off on any and every tangent imaginable (a gift from CA’s Y chromosome)—imagine a child who grew up to be Valeria Luiselli.

In The Story of My Teeth, Gustavo Sa

Suppose, if you can, or if you will, that after a night of revelry and telling each other stories (lies), César Aira and Enrique Vila-Matas somehow managed to conceive a child—a love child, if you will—a child who grew up as an amazingly gifted and surprising author whose stories about stories (a gift from EV-M’s Y chromosome) might take off on any and every tangent imaginable (a gift from CA’s Y chromosome)—imagine a child who grew up to be Valeria Luiselli.

In The Story of My Teeth, Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez, a humble man (ask him) bumbles through life (at a fairly rapid pace) to a point where he’s found (and, perhaps, abandoned) a wife, who’s since become fat, sired (and, perhaps, abandoned) a son, followed a career path which, derailed by fate in an Aira-esque manner, enables him to find his calling (and, perhaps, abandoning that). Ultimately, Sanchez takes up auctioneering, while gathering stories which will enhance his ability to sell whatever items-to-be-auctioned find their ways to him, while developing the theories of auctioneering (not least, of which, is the ‘relative value of the eccentricity) passed on to him by two mentors, one in Mexico, the other the United States.

I finally saw the meaning of the words Master Oklahoma had once spoken with an air of resigned sadness: “We auctioneers are mere hired heralds between the paradise and hell of supply and demand.” I, however, was going to reform the art of auctioneering. I would bury the word herald in the distant past of my profession with my new method. I wasn’t just a lowly seller of objects, but, first and foremost, a lover and collector of good stories, which is the only honest way of modyifying the value of an object. End of declaration.

In the novel’s Afterword, Luiselli explains how the novel came to be—commissioned by the Galería Jumex, a gallery in a poor suburb of Mexico City and funded by Grupo Jumex , a juice factory, an important exhibition was to be featured. The gallery wanted a text which would bridge the gap between the community of which the gallery was a part, the exhibition, and the gallery itself. Instead, the gallery and the juice factory became integral parts of the story which Luiselli wrote and provided to the employees of the juice factory in installments—getting feedback from, but without meeting or interacting with those employees; she did, however, listen to their ongoing discussions before completing the novel.

The discussions between the workers also directed the course of the narrative, pushing me to reflect upon old questions from a new perspective. How do art objects acquire value not only within the specialized marked for art consumption, but also outside its (more or less) well-defined boundaries? How does distancing an object or name from its context in a gallery, museum, or literary pantheon—a reverse Duchampian procedure—affect its meaning and interpretation? How do discourse, narrative, and authorial signatures or names modify the way we perceive artwork and literary texts? The result of these shared concerns is this collective “novel-essay” about the production of value and meaning in contemporary art and literature.

Good enough for me.

4. Something stars, rounded up, because I waited too long and with too much anticipation for this one. It’s Luiselli—she gets the damned 5th star. Then, again, perhaps, I’m just a Sanchez.

Your typical one-star/five-star split so I'm sitting out the provision of stars for this one. Iridescent and irritating, admirable and abominable, loved it, hated it, made me want to read a thriller sans pics, chronology, fortune cookies, kitschy collectibles, literary reference. Never believed in Highway's existence even if disbelief was intentional. Interesting which writers get mentioned in books like these (a genre is forming -- someone's probably already written an essay and named it): BorgYour typical one-star/five-star split so I'm sitting out the provision of stars for this one. Iridescent and irritating, admirable and abominable, loved it, hated it, made me want to read a thriller sans pics, chronology, fortune cookies, kitschy collectibles, literary reference. Never believed in Highway's existence even if disbelief was intentional. Interesting which writers get mentioned in books like these (a genre is forming -- someone's probably already written an essay and named it): Borges, Walser, Woolf, Flaubert, Proust. Surprising that Bruno Schulz didn't appear -- he always appears! The whole high-lit name-dropping technique, for the most part, doesn't do it for me other than in Markson since it's so stripped down and only about biographics. Reference insufficiently replaces insight for me. Anyway, a light (heft-less), amusing (LOL-less), formally ambitious depiction of the life of a figment. Glad it exists, I respect the experiment et cetera, but I fear the walls of my reading have narrowed....more

I think I was really taken with the title of this one, but I probably should have read more about it. It really wasn't for me. I found it mildy amusing at best and really just finished it to finish it. It fits into a tradition of Latin American surrealist/absurdist literature--and I like the story behind it of a collaboration with workers at a juice factory--but this ode to storytelling didn't do much for me. Calling it a novel is pushing it.

Pieces of text commissioned by an art gallery from giant industrial juice company Jumex, that should tell you something. The great authors of history never treated a novel as a custom-made product, but as an exploration of the human condition.

I find the story of the genesis of this product (book) disturbing: so the original idea was to explore the relation between factory workers and their surroundings with the art gallery, Instead of that we get a postmodern exposition of writers that LuiselliPieces of text commissioned by an art gallery from giant industrial juice company Jumex, that should tell you something. The great authors of history never treated a novel as a custom-made product, but as an exploration of the human condition.

I find the story of the genesis of this product (book) disturbing: so the original idea was to explore the relation between factory workers and their surroundings with the art gallery, Instead of that we get a postmodern exposition of writers that Luiselli admires. Nothing profound, nothing breathtaking, just curious anecdotes put together by a bourgeoisie girl.

Forget about the lack of social commentary (which was supposedly the point), artistically this book is lacking in any literary merit: no coherence what so every, the narrator (Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez) has no autonomy, no voice to call his own; his discourse comes not from his own psyche, but from the authors (Luiselli) continuos intrusiveness. And that is the major flaw of this novel; Valeria Luiselli is more interested in being witty and referencing other authors than telling a cohesive and significant story.

I would recommend that Luiselli should go back to basics and learn from all the writers she talks about, not just biographic data, but the secrets of their craft. Maybe she should reread La feria by Juan José Arreola: a genuine carnivalesque work of literature.

To end this review, I just want to express my bewilderment with the literary scene in Mexico. How come Luiselli gets more exposure than, say, Yuri Herrera? Is it her looks? Her influential husband? Great marketing on behalf of Sexto Piso and Coffee House Press? ...more

A novel's narrator introduces himself as 'charismatic': on the page, this would alert the reader to suspect a buffoon, and unreliability. From the voice of a professional audiobook reader, however, there is more doubt - the correlation between sound and assertion seems like a statement of believeable positive qualities, similar to what's found on a CV or job application. And when an author has created an opposite-sex narrator, does hearing the story from someone whose gender corresponds to the nA novel's narrator introduces himself as 'charismatic': on the page, this would alert the reader to suspect a buffoon, and unreliability. From the voice of a professional audiobook reader, however, there is more doubt - the correlation between sound and assertion seems like a statement of believeable positive qualities, similar to what's found on a CV or job application. And when an author has created an opposite-sex narrator, does hearing the story from someone whose gender corresponds to the narrator's perhaps stop one considering how convincing the character is? I can't remember listening to a fiction audiobook before; I might have once or twice, years ago, probably not since the 90s, heard all episodes of a Radio 4 Book of the Week abridgement, and I think there were 'story tapes' when I was a little kid, but otherwise this was a new experience (of only 4 point something hours) that brought new considerations.

As a work of fiction created for an art gallery, I thought this would be made up of scores of fragments and oddments. Rather, it's a pretty straightforward story. Mexican auctioneer and former security guard Gustavo “Highway” Sánchez narrates his adventures in a mostly chronological, but also thematic way, followed by one chapter about his life narrated by the author of the book-within-a-book, whom Sánchez had asked to write about him, and finally a curious, verging on twee, not-entirely-chonological 'chronologic' authored by the translator mixes factual, fictional and tangentially related literary events. (That last chapter produced an unexpected tiny meta-event. Now, one would barely register seeing Amazon mentioned in a contemporary novel bought from Amazon - too commonplace - but the 'chronologic' included: "2011, Mexican author Daniel [didn't write down surname], uploaded Capro's essay to Scribd", Capro being an aforementioned artist and writer. Having quickly worked out with the help of the search engine that it was Kaprow not Capro - these things happen with audio - I located, although admittedly did not read, the document. Other charming lines in this final chapter mentioned the probable invention of the fortune cookie, by one Donald Lao, and that the teenage Luiselli once bought a book by [elderly Mexican author] Sergio Pitol assuming he was "a dead Eastern European or Russian writer".

The Story of My Teeth itself was disappointing: not much new, often reminiscent of Boom-era magic realism: lots of curious coincidences and potential portents; an egotistical hero whose relationships always fail because of others, not him; allusions to a rambling extended family who are also other authors. (From another late-twentieth century canon, Sánchez is inspired by the story of [the unnamed] Martin Amis paying for extensive dental work with writing, and Luiselli herself, in his now well-trodden metafictional tradition, makes a brief appearance as a minor character.) We hear a different take on the narrator's life at the end - which could be taken as a critique of that type of character/novel. For example, Sánchez says that his wife, once a dancer, put on a lot of weight and became abusive, whilst his writer friend, Voragine, says rather that she met someone else whilst he was abroad and Sánchez never really recovered from the loss - and perhaps it is telling re. macho Latin American society that the alternative view also comes from a male character. But it was too little too late to mix it up and I was a bit bored by then. The novel plays with the works of a literary movement I'm not so interested in - but fans of classic Latin magic realism, and there are many, might get more out of this.

It's disappointing, also, that the unusual circumstances of the book's genesis were not used more obviously. Quoting from one of last year's many Luiselli interviews: The novel came about when Luiselli was commissioned to contribute a work of fiction to an exhibition catalog for Galería Jumex, the art gallery sponsored by Mexican juice corporation Jumex. She became interested in exploring the relationships and juxtapositions between a contemporary art gallery and a factory, artists and workers, and art work and juice, and these concerns worked themselves into the novel through the serial, iterative process Luiselli developed to write it. Teeth was written in installments, each of which Luiselli shared with the Jumex workers for feedback. The workers conducted and recorded book club sessions on each installment and sent them back to Luiselli, which she used to inform the next installments she wrote. This very writerly novel came out of what could have been an amazing opportunity to write something demotic, and for an upper-middle class writer, who's lived a rarefied-sounding jet-setting life as the daughter of diplomats, to get honest draft-stage feedback about portrayal of working-class life in literary fiction. But she didn't really talk to people until afterwards: I actually used a pseudonym during the process. I was trying to avoid prejudice. But that was just me. I decided to write under a masculine pseudonym because I assumed that if this was a factory, all of the workers involved were going to be men. And of course, I was wrong! The majority of workers involved were women. Isn't this something you would know and think about from articles, from research, from asking people who set up the project, even if you moved in very high-toned circles where no-one had so much as worked in a factory to support themselves at university? The writer's afterword explains that anecdotes from the workers' discussion groups were used in the plot of The Story of My Teeth - but I think it would have been interesting for readers too if there had been a novel more reflective of working-class Mexican women's lives that had emerged from Luiselli having direct conversations with the staff. (Or if the workers had said they wanted to hear something different, something more escapist, that would have been important too - couldn't we have had an end chapter showing their feedback?) The narrator starts out as a security guard, but in the first chapter moves into a different world, like that of Latin American Boom lit, which was sometimes characterised as out of touch. The afterword mentions how, before radio, readers were employed in some factories to tell stories to workers, and that these were another inspiration for the project: I couldn't help but notice how the favoured authors mentioned - Zola, Victor Hugo, Dickens - often wrote about working-class life.

On the use of writers' names, repurposed as Sanchez's relatives and friends, Luiselli makes an interesting point in another interview: Does Highway know the works of the great authors whose names he appropriates? “It doesn’t matter,” Luiselli tells me. “He doesn’t have to know. He probably doesn’t know. He might’ve just seen a library and taken the names randomly, copying off a bookshelf.” Nor did the factory workers know the names, “which just goes to show how irrelevant those names are,” she says. “The literary community endows them with a weight and importance. There’s always solemnity around names and naming…a respectful awe in front of a name like Borges. The way I wanted to use these names was to put them at the level of the everyday.” Particularly interesting to Luiselli is how “different linguistic communities react to the name-dropping in the novel.” She mentions her uncle—an inspiration for Highway, in fact—who does not care about the contemporary literary world. He works in a market, selling and trading, always in possession of great stories about his objects. So when he encounters Highway’s name-dropping stories about his objects, Luiselli’s uncle doesn’t even think about the appropriation of famous names: “To him, they’re just strange little stories Highway tells.” On the other end of the spectrum, literary people “find [the name-dropping] irritating or think I’m paying homage (which is not the case) or building a literary map”—their own presumptions take over. But for Luiselli’s uncle—and for the factory workers—no such presumptions exist: they just enjoy the stories. But what about interpolating cultural references suggested by the workers? (stereotypically, soap characters, favourite celebrities, or brands, but there would have been people with other interests too, who knew at least some of the writers referenced - I'd rather hear than guess).

Whilst I can see what she's getting at with the musings on what constitutes truth and value (regarding the tall stories Sanchez tells during certain auctions) they end up sounding sophomorically pretentious. Sentimental value and cult collectors' items are hardly obscure ideas. And by all means tell a story about a Del Boy type, that can be funny and sympathetic if done right, but the philosophising in the afterword, when added to the absence of comebacks from irate buyers ripped off in the story, is just off-key.

Three stars for the novel itself, which was okay. I kind of want to rate it lower as a project result, but who's to say that, with hindsight, Luiselli wouldn't have taken a different path?...more

I’m the best auctioneer in the world, but no one knows it because I’m a discreet sort of man. My name is Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, though people call me Highway, I believe with affection. I can imitate Janis Joplin after two rums. I can interpret Chinese fortune cookies. I can stand an egg upright on a table, the way Christopher Columbus did in the famous anecdote. I know how to count to eight in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi. I can float on my back.

This is the story of myI’m the best auctioneer in the world, but no one knows it because I’m a discreet sort of man. My name is Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, though people call me Highway, I believe with affection. I can imitate Janis Joplin after two rums. I can interpret Chinese fortune cookies. I can stand an egg upright on a table, the way Christopher Columbus did in the famous anecdote. I know how to count to eight in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi. I can float on my back.

This is the story of my teeth, and my treatise on collectables and the variable value of objects.

I have previously read Valeria Luiselli's Faces in the Crowd where my review concluded: "I can see why some people love this book, indeed one can see the Luiselli could well go on to write a 5* book, but it ultimately didn't quite work for me."

Unfortunately Story of My Teeth isn’t that book, indeed it feels a step backwards.

Our narrator Gustavo, is as his own introduction sets-out, the self-claimed best auctioneer in the world. He collects largely worthless tat, but sells it via an auction technique of his own invention that relies on spinning a story:

My characteristic awareness of what is seemly, as well as my loyalty to and respect for both my teacher and our profession, prevent me from revealing the secrets of the art of auctioneering. But there is one thing I can explain about the Yushimito Method, which derives from a combination of classical rhetoric and the mathematical theory of eccentricity. According to Master Oklahoma, there are four types of auctions: circular, elliptical, parabolic, and hyperbolic. The strand that any auction follows is, in turn, determined by the relative value of the eccentricity (epsilon) of the auctioneer’s discourse; that is to say, the degree of deviation of its conic section from a given circumference (the object to be auctioned). The range of values is as follows:

THE EPSILON OF THE CIRCULAR METHOD IS ZERO.THE EPSILON OF THE ELLIPTICAL METHOD IS GREATER THAN ZERO BUT LESS THAN ONE.THE EPSILON OF THE PARABOLIC METHOD IS ONE.THE EPSILON OF THE HYPERBOLIC METHOD IS GREATER THAN ONE.

With the passage of time, I developed and added another category to Master Oklahoma’s auctioning methods, although I didn’t put it into practice until many years later. This was the allegoric method, the eccentricity (epsilon) of which is infinite and does not depend on contingent or material variables. I am sure that my master would have approved.

[...]

Listening to Leroy Van Dyke sing “The Auctioneer”—which is also the central theme of my favorite film, What Am I Bid?—gave me the impetus I needed to fine-tune the conceptual details of my allegoric method. I’d realized that there was a gap in my profession—a gap that I had to fill. There was not a single auctioneer, adept though he might be in the frantic calling of numbers, or expert in the manipulation of the commercial and emotional value of the lots, who was able to say anything worth hearing about his objects, because he didn’t understand or wasn’t interested in them as such, only in their exchange value. I finally saw the meaning of the words Master Oklahoma had once spoken with an air of resigned sadness: “We auctioneers are mere hired heralds between the paradise and hell of supply and demand.” I, however, was going to reform the art of auctioneering. I would bury the word herald in the distant past of my profession with my new method. I wasn’t just a lowly seller of objects but, first and foremost, a lover and collector of good stories, which is the only honest way of modifying the value of an object. End of declaration.

Notably his collection of teeth which he claims belonged to various famous writers, past and present, which gives Luiselli the excuse for lots of literary in-jokes. The description of the owners of the teeth from Gustavo enables her to weave in brief pen portraits of very famous authors of the past (Borges, Woolf, GK Chesterton and, from the present-day, Vila-Matas), Gustavo frequently quotes his “relatives” (My Uncle Marcelo Sanchez-Proust once wrote in his diary.... followed by a Proustian quote) and the cast of characters is named after her peers: Cesar Aira, Sergio Pitol, Alejandro Zambra, Enrique (her real-life partner), Luiselli herself and Yuri Herrera.

Now Yuri Herrera is, of course, a male Mexican novelist, winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for the wonderful Signs Proceeding the End of the World, but in this novel a character of the same name features as a female policewoman. Some searching dug up a White Review piece where the interviewer queried this. Luiselli responded:

If a reader has no idea who Yuri Herrera is, to use your example, then nothing in the narrative tissue around that name is altered. Yuri Herrera is just a policewoman. If, on the contrary, the name bears a certain weight by virtue of the many associations it has for the reader, then both the name and the narrative around it suffer a kind of indent. The name weighs more heavily and the narrative around it takes a different shape, and also envelopes the name more tightly. But the mere fact that this effect depends completely on the reader’s pre-conceptions of a name and its associations says a lot about the ultimate value, content or meaning of names.

And this to me gets to the heart of the novel. One could think

a) aren't I well-read for recognising the name, and isn't the author clever for playing on that Yuri is a female name in other countries (e.g. Japan) to illustrate her key theme - that the perceived value of an object depends on the name it is given and the context. What a great bookorb) really - that's it?

I was b). This novel was written as a commission to accompany an art exhibit at a major factory – which perhaps explains the rather insubstantial feel of the whole thing – and was apparently written in instalments with feedback from readings to the factory workers incorporated. It all smacks of a gimmick, the literary games are at a rather simple level and smack a little of too many in-jokes and nods to friends and peers and the artistic theme is hammered home with little subtlet.

The translation by Christina McSweeney is perhaps the one bright spot. It has, as with Sidewalks, been done in close collaboration with the author and as another iteration of the text, including a timeline of relevant literary milestones and Gustavo’s life inserted by McSweeney herself. But that isn’t sufficient to elevate the novel above the superficial.

Disappointing. 1.5 stars - I will round up to 2 as I tend to reserve 1 for the truly awful....more

My three/four star rating is on the fence. I think I don't know enough yet to really review it, so I confess I will have to investigate further. I need to hear more about her and from critics that know more about the situation she is writing about.

I heard about this book from many Best of 2015 lists, and liked the concept of the book: The sort of fabulist tale of an auctioneer, Gustavo "Highway" Sanchez, who is actually an auctioneer of famous people's teeth. The text is part novel, part meditatMy three/four star rating is on the fence. I think I don't know enough yet to really review it, so I confess I will have to investigate further. I need to hear more about her and from critics that know more about the situation she is writing about.

I heard about this book from many Best of 2015 lists, and liked the concept of the book: The sort of fabulist tale of an auctioneer, Gustavo "Highway" Sanchez, who is actually an auctioneer of famous people's teeth. The text is part novel, part meditation, part art, but is sort of a mashup meditation on art objects and fame and home and family and the stories we tell and agree to believe in; it sounded right up my alley. Unclassifiable, mixed genres, deliberately incoherent, pastiche, multiple genres, art mixed in, with lots of literary references. The author also talks about it as a series of collaborations. Is it? Not sure, but it could be.

I read it--it's pretty short--and liked it quite a bit. I looked into the author, Luiselli, who just got an award for being a promising artist under 35. She seems intriguing. She's an "it" girl, an art "object" of fame, of the moment, interestingly enough given her book that talks amusingly about the fetishization of someone like Marilyn Monroe's teeth: Oh! To have one! How much would you pay?! Oh, Sanchez! Oh, Luiselli!

I feel like I don't know enough Mexican or even contemporary Latin American fiction (some of it is not even translated into English) to appreciate what it is she is doing and/or failing to do. I know Borges, which this reminds me most of, and I know Marquez, and see her working in these traditions right away. Magical realism/fantasy, with a lot of energy and humor and insight into the nature of stories/lies. Is Sanchez a bullshitter? A liar? Without question. Do you keep reading and being attracted to his lies? Without question. Is this the same for Luiselli, that we read and it is all a tissue of lies and shiny surfaces? I don't know. It IS a shiny, attractive and amusing and smart on a number of levels. I think.

I looked deeper and read some reviews. American reviews almost universally like her, but those that know Mexican literature and Latin American literature complain that she is a superficial and pretentious shadow of writers (writers I don't know, mind you) such as César Aira and Enrique Vila-Matas, and Alejandro Zambra (who writes a blurb for the back cover that calls this text a "bold and brilliant novel"). Luiselli name-drops, in a kind of literary fashion, dozens of artists, mostly novelists and thinkers she likes, but only mentions them. Is this name dropping a comment on superficiality or indeed, as one (scathing) reviewer, Juan Guzman claims, evidence of her superficiality and pretentiousness? I can say that in my first reading I noticed she mentions famous texts (she was a philosophy major as an undergraduate) and not with any depth or particular purpose. Guzman says she needs to read these writers and "La feria by Juan José Arreola: a genuine carnivalesque work of literature." I look up Arreola: Hey, I like carnivalesque literature, Rabelais, and I recognized and like that Luiselli is writing in this tradition. I can't begin to compare, though, because there's nothing by Arreola I can see in translation into English, alas.

Guzman says Luiselli is a marketing phenomenon: she's strikingly pretty, she's admittedly precocious, she has an influential husband and a hip press, Coffee House Press, focusing all their time and energy on her work at the expense of others. I don't know enough to judge this, but I still say, I enjoyed what I read. I like shiny objects waved in front of me sometimes. Is Luiselli just one of those? I hope not.

One thing that bugged me after it had hooked me into the project: Luiselli dedicates the book to The Jumex Factory Staff. Here Luiselli, a hip avant-garde artist of the bourgeois seems to be reaching out to the working class across the isle from her privileged position. In an appendix Luiselli tells us she was commissioned to write the book as a work of fiction for an exhibition as part of the Jumex Collection, a prestigious art gallery funded in part by the profits from the factory. In a way, this is like the Walmart art museum, a large factory that pays its workers very little to work in their factory and at the same time attracts the very rich to its museum.

Luiselli's commission with Jumex is for her to inquire into the bridges or lack thereof between art and the people, between artists and workers. So good idea to collaborate with the workers, right? She begins to write FOR the workers in the factory, she tells us, most of whom it seems to me will not be interested in her esoteric writing. When I first heard of it I thought: COOL! She's writing with the factory members! What a cool collaboration! But in fact, she writes to them disguised as Sanchez, she never meets any of them in the process, only 5-6 read or respond to any of it, and it's not clear to me what any of their responses have to do with the actual writing. I could be wrong!

Collaboration? Feels like further separation, not collaboration. Has nothing to do with workers or work in that factory. Feels like exploitation, to tell you the truth, to say she is working with them (and all the reviews mention this as a cool thing) and not really be working with them in any fundamental way. To claim it as a bridge, but it's not. She sent them little chapbooks of the serialized process and had their comments reported back to her. She never talked to them! So where's the real interaction? She claims many of the stories in The Story of my Teeth are from the workers. If that is so, THAT IS WAY COOL. I need to know more, though to be able to believe her, and I still have questions.

But at THIS moment, I on balance still like it, in my ignorance. If I give her the benefit of the doubt, it is a pretty cool read! The feel of it is interesting and complex and the stories in it about the teeth are funny and the character of Sanchez is cool. ...more

with faces in the crowd, it seemed rather evident that we'd only begun to see the depths of valeria luiselli's literary talents - given that the young mexican author is barely into her 30s. the story of my teeth (la historia de mis dientes), happily, is as imaginative and richly conceived a novel as her first.

if vila-matas, aira, and borges (all of whom figure into the tale) had collaborated together on a book about a storytelling auctioneer with an affection for literature, we might have seewith faces in the crowd, it seemed rather evident that we'd only begun to see the depths of valeria luiselli's literary talents - given that the young mexican author is barely into her 30s. the story of my teeth (la historia de mis dientes), happily, is as imaginative and richly conceived a novel as her first.

if vila-matas, aira, and borges (all of whom figure into the tale) had collaborated together on a book about a storytelling auctioneer with an affection for literature, we might have seen something like the story of my teeth. stylistically unique, but squarely centered within the rich tradition of playful, allusive latin american fiction, luiselli's story evinces an enviable flair which belies her age. like its main character, gustavo sánchez sánchez (affectionately referred to as "highway" throughout), the story of my teeth is, at times, enigmatic, idiosyncratic, magnetizing, and delightfully charming.

*translated from the spanish by christina macsweeney (faces in the crowd & sidewalks), whom also penned the book's seventh part ("the chronologic"), a timeline of the story, related details, and relevant moments in literary history.

**also worth noting is the genesis of the story of my teeth, commissioned as part of an art exhibition and written as a serial incorporating feedback from its intended audience (see luiselli's explanatory afterword)....more

"Some men have luck, some men have charisma. I've got both. I'm the best auction caller in the world, my name is Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez, and this is the story of my teeth."

If that makes you laugh the rest of the book probably will too. Because of how the book was written, the entire thing feels rather meta and episodic. The author wrI first learned of this book on the 2016 Tournament of Books Longlist. When I found it at the library, the description made me laugh, in fact all the back says is,

"Some men have luck, some men have charisma. I've got both. I'm the best auction caller in the world, my name is Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez, and this is the story of my teeth."

If that makes you laugh the rest of the book probably will too. Because of how the book was written, the entire thing feels rather meta and episodic. The author wrote it in a serial form with feedback from factory workers in Mexico, and I think it feels like that still. The translator added a little section in the back on her own. Within the story of Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez are other stories, and in many ways the major theme of the book is that of storytelling - the stories we tell others and how we present ourselves, the stories of others we tell and what we are trying to get across in doing so, and how we spin the stories that may or may not be true. And Sanchez tells stories, to sell items at an auction, to tell about his dreams, to tell about himself.

I don't think it would be for everyone. I felt I had to be patient while reading it, despite the short length, because it isn't quite linear. It is fun to stumble across the author's name (as a character) as well as a few other living Mexican authors - one I knew was Yuri Herrera. They are like little mini tributes inside the text.

Early in 2013 Valeria Luiselli was commissioned to write a work of fiction for the catalogue of ‘The Hunter and the Factory,’ an exhibition at the Jumex gallery, a prominent collection of contemporary art owned by the Grupo Jumex –a juice factory located in Ecatepec de Morelos, the industrial wasteland on the outskirts of Mexico city. The exhibit, and Luiselli’s commission, aimed to interrogate the links between the gallery and the factory, the artists and the workers, and the town itself as botEarly in 2013 Valeria Luiselli was commissioned to write a work of fiction for the catalogue of ‘The Hunter and the Factory,’ an exhibition at the Jumex gallery, a prominent collection of contemporary art owned by the Grupo Jumex –a juice factory located in Ecatepec de Morelos, the industrial wasteland on the outskirts of Mexico city. The exhibit, and Luiselli’s commission, aimed to interrogate the links between the gallery and the factory, the artists and the workers, and the town itself as both a marginalized suburb and a center of culture and contemporary art. Inspired by the tobacco readers and serialized novels of the mid-nineteenth century, Luiselli chose to write not about but for the workers, creating a collaborative novel in installments that could be read aloud in the factory.

Luiselli’s text is a clever, multi-layered, encyclopedic novel rich with historical anecdotes and literary shout-outs. Like Highway’s Allegorics, it juxtaposes the academic with the suburban --Quintilian’s Lives of the Caesars with fiberglass dinosaurs-- to examine the value of an ordinary town.

The names of renowned authors, philosophers, and artists are used out of context to describe the average and mundane, without necessarily adding any intrinsic characteristic or background to a character. This serves as both a clever distancing technique, deconstructing ideas about status and meaning, but also makes for writing that is highly detailed and researched.

The writing is interesting not only in terms of content, but also form. It is essentially an archive and palimpsest of reframed narrative, block quotes, riddles, repartee, images, song lyrics, Latin, Russian, and Chinese all working together to construct the story of one man’s teeth. Despite this complexity, the pacing of the novel is contemporary, witty, and entertaining, without any hint of cynicism or ironic detachment. “The Story of my Teeth” asks questions about art, ownership, and value in a manner that is elegant and novel: “how do art objects acquire value not only within the specialized market for art consumption, but also outside its more or less well-defined boundaries? How does distancing an object, or a name, from its context in a gallery, museum, or literary pantheon – a reverse Duchampian procedure—affect meaning and interpretation? How do discourse, narrative, and authorial signatures or names modify the way we perceive art works and literary texts?” The result of these shared concerns is an important and wonderful collective “novel-essay” about the production of value and meaning in contemporary art and literature.

You could call this book experimental, or unclassifiable; you could call it a novel or a collection of vignettes. It is also a work of art in the paper form, is delightful, humorous, and distinctly literary. Though barely a novel in the usual sense, it does tell a story, evoke a place, and is definitely about teeth.

I happen to like all of the above, though I've not had much attention on teeth in my lifetime. Come to think of it however, my mother had dentures from an early age and I do recall m You could call this book experimental, or unclassifiable; you could call it a novel or a collection of vignettes. It is also a work of art in the paper form, is delightful, humorous, and distinctly literary. Though barely a novel in the usual sense, it does tell a story, evoke a place, and is definitely about teeth.

I happen to like all of the above, though I've not had much attention on teeth in my lifetime. Come to think of it however, my mother had dentures from an early age and I do recall many scenes where she was either removing them or putting them back in. Perhaps this why I was drawn to the title.

Gustavo "Highway" Sanchez Sanchez is a denizen of the industrial suburbs of Mexico City. His particular skill is as an auctioneer, a unique one for he uses hyperbolic stories, improvised on the spot, to make the items being auctioned take on more value. Highway also has an entire house full of collectibles. He considers himself an expert in both fields.

In the way of a novel this book gives readers a patchy life story of this caricature of a character. But it is his stories, especially the ones he tells to sell off his own teeth at a crucial down and out moment, which give the book its tone.

Had I gone into it expecting a standard novel form, I would have been dismayed. Luckily I read the Afterword first, something I rarely do, so I was prepared. As I read, I was reminded of the early books of V S Naipaul. The community and its way of life are conjured into focus until I felt I was in the churches, the cafes, and the streets of Highway's part of town.

Probably not a book for most of the readers I know. Definitely a refreshing break from what I usually read....more

Crazy, strange, funny, clever, original, unique, fresh, delightfull. Between gasps of laughter and having to read certain phrases and passages two times thinking:' No, did she really write this?!' A small book to reread and make people happy by giving it as a present.

"Everyone knows that horses have no compassion, I told Alan Pauls. If a horse sees you standing in front of it, crying, it just chews its hay and blinks. You start crying harder, your eyes overflowing with tears and pain, and the hoCrazy, strange, funny, clever, original, unique, fresh, delightfull. Between gasps of laughter and having to read certain phrases and passages two times thinking:' No, did she really write this?!' A small book to reread and make people happy by giving it as a present.

"Everyone knows that horses have no compassion, I told Alan Pauls. If a horse sees you standing in front of it, crying, it just chews its hay and blinks. You start crying harder, your eyes overflowing with tears and pain, and the horse lifts its tail and lets out a long, silent fart. There is no way to stir its feelings. I once dreamed that a horse was persistently licking my face. But that doesn’t count, because it happened in a dream."

this book has many fine features and I might describe it as a rollicking descent into absurdity. It didn't work for me though. It reminded me of that series about miss peregrines home for children - a story propelled by a method that is suited to a writing exercise, but better excused from efforts for full length novelization. There just wasn't enough substance to justify the fetishization of the process. And the process wasn't enough to justify the novel. So, meh.

How could you not like this book? It has a little bit of everything touch and feel. Even the book itself, the artwork, the actual paper grade of substance. The story behind the story is just as delightful showing a collaborative spectacle of values collage period/place materiality. I'm reminded of a film admired "The Milagro Beanfield War" one of whose main character an elderly Mexican village faux sorcerer rings close to this book's protag. in thought/deed as he charms readers' imaginations likHow could you not like this book? It has a little bit of everything touch and feel. Even the book itself, the artwork, the actual paper grade of substance. The story behind the story is just as delightful showing a collaborative spectacle of values collage period/place materiality. I'm reminded of a film admired "The Milagro Beanfield War" one of whose main character an elderly Mexican village faux sorcerer rings close to this book's protag. in thought/deed as he charms readers' imaginations like tooth fairies leaving shiny coins under pillowed sleep. It's all a wee magical romp that stays good on yer mind's palate. Second course but of course ! must read her other talked about book "Faces in the Crowd." Bravo, well done!...more

This was a strange book but definitely an interesting read. Really enjoyed the first half, but the second half went a bit over the edge for me. Liked the themes of storytelling and really enjoyed the main character, but this whole thing feels a bit like an experiment of sorts, one I'm not sure I really understand. It feels... like it's trying, but it's not quite there.

I will give this book one thing though, and it's that I've thought a lot about it since I finished it.

A note: this was not as good as Faces in the Crowd, but I feel this got considerably more notice and acclaim than that earlier book. If you read and enjoyed this, go check out Faces in the Crowd; and, if you're considering this, go check out Faces in the Crowd.

That out of the way, this is an entertaining, funny read with a larger than life narrator whose tentative relationship with the truth slowly blurs the lines between story and storyteller. There's a nice shift towards the end of the book (bA note: this was not as good as Faces in the Crowd, but I feel this got considerably more notice and acclaim than that earlier book. If you read and enjoyed this, go check out Faces in the Crowd; and, if you're considering this, go check out Faces in the Crowd.

That out of the way, this is an entertaining, funny read with a larger than life narrator whose tentative relationship with the truth slowly blurs the lines between story and storyteller. There's a nice shift towards the end of the book (before the included chapbook) that reorients the reader in relationship to the text, but the general shift is considerably more minor than the one in Faces in the Crowd, and as such I was (incorrectly) expecting something larger.

I probably would have like this more had I read it first - Valeria Luiselli remains a compelling author, one whose work I will keep an eye out for. Her general writing style is distinctly modern and brisk, making for quick reads, and her playfulness with narrative and exuberant intelligence raise her books above much else coming out these days....more

"Several years later, while eating king prawns with his friend Sergio Pitol, in the town of Potrero in Veracruz State, Mr. Vila-Matas told Pitol about the episode with the tooth. However, in the middle of his story, a molar did in fact come loose, and fell into his plate of king prawns. Mr. Sergio Pitol, who is a man of great wisdom and mysticism, asked Vila-Matas to give him the molar, as he knew a shaman in the town who buried the teeth of the best men and women, and with them conducted a whit"Several years later, while eating king prawns with his friend Sergio Pitol, in the town of Potrero in Veracruz State, Mr. Vila-Matas told Pitol about the episode with the tooth. However, in the middle of his story, a molar did in fact come loose, and fell into his plate of king prawns. Mr. Sergio Pitol, who is a man of great wisdom and mysticism, asked Vila-Matas to give him the molar, as he knew a shaman in the town who buried the teeth of the best men and women, and with them conducted a white magic ritual that guaranteed they would be preserved for sweet eternity in human memory. Mr. Vila-Matas handed it to him with a degree of reluctance, but finally trusting that his friend would keep his word."...more

Weird title, weird story that I found weirdly hilarious. I kept trying to figure out what kind of humor this book was giving me. It's not American comedic humor we get from Steve Martin or Tina Fey, it's not British humour we get from P. G. Wodehouse, it's the kind of humor that these one liners make my torso twitch once with a slight 'ha'. I had to look up the author, Valeria Luiselli to figure out that this might be Mexican humor. This is a good one to listen to audio as the convincing voice oWeird title, weird story that I found weirdly hilarious. I kept trying to figure out what kind of humor this book was giving me. It's not American comedic humor we get from Steve Martin or Tina Fey, it's not British humour we get from P. G. Wodehouse, it's the kind of humor that these one liners make my torso twitch once with a slight 'ha'. I had to look up the author, Valeria Luiselli to figure out that this might be Mexican humor. This is a good one to listen to audio as the convincing voice of Highway is well done by Armando Duran. This book is not for everyone, it's weird, weirdly good in my mind though....more

The Story of My Teeth is a most unusual book. It’s very clever and very witty – but… I can’t say that I really enjoyed reading it.

Valeria Luiselli is a rising star in Mexican literary circles and this novella is published by Granta. The blurbs praise her intellect and her mastery of prose. The book itself is a postmodern pastiche of styles which come together to explore the value of the things we buy and the way that celebrity attaches itself to consumer goods to inflate the price. All you needThe Story of My Teeth is a most unusual book. It’s very clever and very witty – but… I can’t say that I really enjoyed reading it.

Valeria Luiselli is a rising star in Mexican literary circles and this novella is published by Granta. The blurbs praise her intellect and her mastery of prose. The book itself is a postmodern pastiche of styles which come together to explore the value of the things we buy and the way that celebrity attaches itself to consumer goods to inflate the price. All you need is a good story, and the narrator of this book, auctioneer Gustavo Sanchez Sanchez, tells stories of increasing absurdity to achieve ridiculous prices for the goods he auctions…

Behind on my reviews but would suggest reading the afterword and perhaps Christina McSweeney's Chronologic (immediately preceding the afterword) first. Otherwise, you may have, like me, the sense of reading a very clever and rather pleasant elaborate in-joke about modern art, literature and critical theory that is largely going over your head.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. Her novels and essays have been translated into many languages and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney’s. Some of her recent projects include a ballet libretto for the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, performed by the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center in 2010;Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. Her novels and essays have been translated into many languages and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney’s. Some of her recent projects include a ballet libretto for the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, performed by the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center in 2010; a pedestrian sound installation for the Serpentine Gallery in London; and a novella in installments for workers in a juice factory in Mexico. She lives in New York City.